Our first ever step on the road to greater self-sufficiency, even before discovering wild garlic, was making Elderflower Champagne.

Once someone has shown you what Elderflower looks like, you can’t help but see and smell it everywhere you go in early June.

And what’s not to like about an alcoholic fizzy drink that is as simple as sticking it in a bucket for 6 days, bottling and drinking!

This year we have gone all out with a big batch of elderflower champagne and also elderflower cordial or the first time, for our winter store cupboard, using the ever reliable River Cottage recipes.

Now a days we follow the advice to use plastic bottles to release some of the pressure. Ever enthusiastic in our first year, and re-used champagne bottles with new plastic corks and wire cages.

Two exploded late at night waking our flatmate in terror that someone was breaking in with a shotgun!

The pressure in the rest pushed the plastic corks up a good centimeter as they strained against the wire cages which barely held them in.

So much so, that when it came to the grand opening ceremony, each hand become a mini unexploded bomb.

To be handled with extreme caution least they go off before reaching the safety of the garden, where upon the merest touch of the straining wire cage would result in the cork launching into orbit as a  ten foot plume of liquid arced across the yard.